Relaxed kind of plastic scale modelling

MiG-31BM; pt.12

Hi everyone! Just a short update tonight. I was working on landing gears and had quite some problems with them. I managed to break the pin on the front landing gear and had to improvise, but it turned out, the front assembly was suddenly all too high. I am quite sure, it was entirely my mistake, but to this day, I haven’t figured what I did wrong and I probably never will. Anyway, I managed to fix it – case closed! The other problem was sagging of one of the main gear dollies. The model is balanced in the way, that the main landing gear carry almost all of the weight. And I kid you not – this monster is heavy. Anyway, one of the dollies started to give way under the weight and with time, started leaning to the side. If I’d build another MiG-31, I’d definitely go for a metal gear, like the SAC one – it definitely is a sound investment.

On to the photos!

AMK give you only one option on displaying IRST – mounted on a pedestal, seen on some side profiles artworks, which is completely fictitious. When on ground, IRST is stowed – use only one half of the body and cut the lens in half. I’ve painted my lens medium grey from the inside and sanded the outside to get that matt-clear look. Two strips of leftover vinyl masks were add on the side to simulate the hinges.

Note the correct position of the stowed IRST pod.

Complex main landing gear arrangement which carries all the weight. Some CA and epoxy glue later, the dollies stand firmly.

3 thoughts on “MiG-31BM; pt.12”

Hello,
I have been closely following your wonderful build while I working on my own MiG-31. While assembling the nose gear, I noticed that the kit nose gear appears to be considerably longer (taller?) than it should be, after comparing it with several walkaround photos of the real thing. I have been waiting to see if you or any others who are building the kit online have reached the same conclusion, and if so, how you went about correcting it.

As for the main gear assembly, I used brass pins and expoy glue to assemble them in hopes that they will be able to bear the weight of the model, but I am still a bit skeptical it will do the job. I am also greatly concerned as to whether I can get the main gear to line up properly with that crazy trapeze-style design. I bought a set of G-Factor brass landing gear for the kit from SprueBros, but haven’t decided whether to use them or not.

Thank you on your nice comments!
To be honest, now you’ve made me even more puzzled. Let me explain to you exactly what happened to me. During assembly, I broke a plastic pin on part L49. To remedy the situation I’ve cut it off at the base, drilled a hole and replaced it with brass rod of same diameter. I also replaced the plastic pin on part L26, to increase the sturdiness of the whole assembly. However, when I started attaching the landing gear struts, the whole aircraft got a considerable nose high attitude. In fact, it got pretty level (almost the correct position) only when I put on the main landing gear wheels – but the front leg was almost touching the ground in this case, without wheels attached. I couldn’t figure it out what the problem was, as the modification was pretty straightforward and with the fixed L49 and L28 parts positions, you really can’t screw it up. And oh yeah – as it was, the supporting arm of L28 did not reach the correct position on the front gear strut. As I haven’t seen this problem on anyone’s else build, I figured it must be of my own doing, but now that you mention it, that may not be the case. As far as corrections go – I decided that the easiest way is to cut a few millimeters of the top of the landing gear – I also sanded slightly the bottom of the front wheels for better look of the model (I hate it when models sits on a perfectly round tires). I left the MLG assembly as it is – I just had to reinforce the one that started to sag under the weight with epoxy.